Duck Tales

The story of Scrooge McDuck, The Richest Duck in the World, with the biggest safe that you can dive into a pool of money. I remember obssessively watching this show as a kid, I loved it, I loved the theme song, it just made me feel good. He was a nut ball and his nephews were normal, so many great adventures, it was the good old days of Disney cartoons.

Gargoyles

This was something for the older kids, I remember from 94 and it ended around 97, a fantastic cartoon, deep and dark. I loved Goliath, the most honorable Gargoyle and most probably the strongest. I watched this show nonstop every time I got back from school, I just couldn’t get enough of it. Gargoyles was a great show and I got pulled into it whenever I was watching, never could get enough of it.

Talespin

Now this is one of the fun bunch, I loved Baloo, always getting into trouble and some how getting out it. The idea of going from Island to Island with Merchandise and work as if its the 1950s with Monkeys as bartenders was funny. Some of the characters were based on Jungle book and that is what got me watching it, I just remember that it was from the early 1990s, and you know you sing the theme song every time, “TALESPIN” lol.
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There are days when the diet goes out the window, and there has to be a level of moderation but in my case that went out the window. This long weekend we all met up at the shalaih, filled up the HDs full of tv shows and movies to watch while staying in and in the water during the day.

At night we were bbqing some burgers and hot dogs, and they were damn good. But that isn’t the bad part, we had one of our friends, we will call him “The Ferret” who went and picked up some sweets for us and they picked up some dessert for us. In the form of 2 dozen Krispy Kream doughnuts and 2 dozen Hardeez Cookies, and I stuffed myself silly with those cookies and doughnuts. I just had this strange urge to have more and more, the cookies just tasted that good and the doughnuts were great too. But later on I didn’t feel that great about it, I wish I didn’t have that many. I check myself on the weight, turns out I gained 1.8 Kgs in just one day which I plan on losing this week.

This is one of the freakiest moments I had in a while, I tried logging into my Bank of America account only to find it locked. I didn’t have a clue why, but there is a notification button to send an unlock code to specified emergency address. Luckily I went through the process of entering the security question process when an unknown computer tries to log into my BoA account, and if they get the questions wrong that it locks my account and the only way to unlock is from a code that is sent to the emergency email registered to the account.

I unlocked the account, and everything looked fine, so I called up BoA to check what was going on. They told me that my account was accessed from an odd location several times and was locked for security reasons. I’m thankful for their security steps they have and their quick action, and getting the account active again is instantaneous making it a very simple and easy process. Even with the safeguards active, and the security questions and changing my passwords every 3 to 6 months, I still freaked out. You never think that your online account would be attacked or someone malicious would try to access it but now I know, and I’m happy that every thing is fine, I just make sure that whenever I can access my accounts I do it through a secure VPN or from a connected computer. Feels like a dodged a bullet in this situation, I just hope this is the worst that could happen.

For several weeks now I have been having issues with my ReadyNAS 1100, its been running perfectly for the longest time. I made the upgrade from 4 x 1TB drives to 4 x 2TB drives, with X-Raid configuration I get about 5.55 TB worth of storage on my Network Area Storage device. Overall the ReadyNAS is a fantastic and extremely durable piece of hardware with great support from Netgear if you have any issues that needs warranty replacement. The best part of owning the ReadyNAS is its user base, the online forums have such a wealth of information that you are always helped by someone more experience, be it a network issues or a hardware issues. In my case I began facing issues with it, any file bigger then 400 MB it would hang in the beginning of transfer, from “30 seconds” to “2 minutes” to “55 minutes” then it would just hang.

First thing I did was check health status and go through the logs several times, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary, there were no bad sectors on the hard drives. So I kept checking network for issues, changing different network components, even giving the PC a direct connection to the ReadyNAS mounted on the rack to test it, but I still got the same transfer issue. After going to the forums I found someone with the same issue but going into extreme detail in the forum, told me where to check the Hard Drives for the “Smart +” status and see if there are any issues, and turns out one of the drives recently had over 65000+ Raw Error Rate which would lead me to agree that there is an issue with the drive, a way to test it is to take it out and try another transfer to see if the files transfers without issues.

Turns out the drive that had issues is a drive that had ATA errors that increased to about 6 over time. When I took out the drive and did a transfer turns out that it was the faulty drive. Luckily I already had a spare Hitachi 2 TB drive that I inserted to replace it. Now the annoying process is going through the HD replacement with Hitachi even though it is warrantied for 5 years they are making this a very annoying process, unlike Western Digital who make it such a simple process, Hitachi is annoying with all their back and forth but I will get my Hard Drive RMAed and replaced!

Packing list before traveling is always a troubling task, I make a list every time and I still forget something or I wish I brought something with me. This is a work trip coming up with meetings packed for three days of traveling and two days of meetings. The bouncing back and forth is going to be very annoying to deal with but at this point I’m going to take advantage of the travel time to catch up with some shows and work on PC while on the plane. Filling up the HD and making sure I pack up everything always takes some times, and 80% of the time I forget the headphones to the last minute and I don’t like using the normal headphones when I got used to the in-ear headphones.

Packing List:

• Other Currencies
• Passport
• Personal Moleskine
• Work Moleskine
• Canon G11
• iPad
• iPod Touch
• Maximum PC & Wired Magazines
• Work Documents
• Business Cards
• Phone, Camera, Laptop Charger

The iPad mania is still going on in Kuwait and all over the world, and I have to say that Apple has a breakthrough product. There are a few drawbacks that would make this the best product period, but right now it doesn’t have any competition. I use my iPad daily, it has gotten me hooked with several applications. The only biggest flaw is that you can’t move data inside applications to and from your main PC, so your iPad gets filled up with data from inside applications, you can’t back-up or move, you can just delete. The battery lasts a decent time but it takes so damn long to charge, if you kill the battery completely it takes over 4 hours to charge fully which is insane. But I can’t stop using it, its so easy to take around and I can carry so much content with it.

Best Applications:

• AirVideo – Streaming Videos
• Marvel Comics – A selection of Marvel Comics
• NewsRack – RSSFeed
• Sorted – To Do list
• Dropbox – Extention of the online application
• GoodReader – Enables you to read all types of documents & spreadsheets
• AngryBirds HD – Addictive online game
• Scrabble – The old school board game
• Shazam – Gives you the name of any song by listening to a clip

iPad Usage:

• Reading Comics – 40%
• Surfing The Net – 22%
• Playing Games – 12%
• Watching Shows/Anime – 18%
• Other Applications – 8%

Monday night I was driving to see some family around 7pm heading to Shamiya on Airport Road (50), at the light its two lane wide and I’m on the right lane. We are all going to make a left, nothing much to it simply going forward and making a left. As we turn to straighten, I’m in the middle lane of the 2nd ring road which is a 3 lane wide road. This car on my right being driven by a female (wearing a hijab) and she is having a conversation with the gentlemen on her right, her car gets a little too close to mine and I move a bit to the left when she laughs and pulls left to hit my car. Her side view mirror flew off, I heard a thud and I was very annoyed, any further left and I would have hit the car on my left. I really didn’t want to stop and head to a police station, she freaked out, I stopped and took a picture of her license plate. I told her I’m not going to the police station since its your fault and I don’t want to bother waiting for paperwork. I think she was afraid I would start shouting but I was pissed and left. I honestly don’t know why my luck is like this, statistically speaking 90% of all my accidents and close calls involve women with hijabs, seriously this is just driving me nuts, no attention to the road, and not paying attention the cars on the roads but maybe its just my luck. I thought she dented my door, but she dented my fender just under the light. I was lucky it wasn’t a hit to the light, so it was a dent but on the protection where I head my Huper Optic protection.

Now for the interesting part, the Huper Optik protection did its job, it protected the paint from getting damaged and its only one dent albeit a sizable dent but still manageable. And the black line is the plastic which rubbed onto my car, it comes off with some elbow grease. One of my friends said that since there is no paint damage that I can take it to DentXpress and they could take it out easily, so I’m going to try my luck and hopefully they can get it clear out.

Got walk up just before noon, and someone on the other saying we are heading out on the boat, get up, get up. I slept late catching up on some episodes and relaxing the night before planning to sleep in a bit, and the weather forecast was to be a dusty day, but they were so wrong. I jumped in the shower and changed into my swimsuit and headed straight to Koot. Food check, Drinks Check, iPod Check, Everyone onboard check,

Around 1:30 pm we headed out of the Port heading towards Kubbar at full speed, a few things went flying as usual but it was a very comfortable ride. It was a bit windy but the waters are always calm around Kubbar Island. Its been a while since I went to Kubbar Island so I was really forward to it, the water is always nice around there, and this time we brought a few floating toys to use while in the water. Music blasting, Ceasers tiny pizzas and some drinks made for a very quick ride. We passed by a few oil and natural gas tankers on the way there, those things are huge, I mean bigger then buildings, we are tiny right next to them and this isn’t a small bought, it really is a moving island.

20-25 mins and we got to Kubbar Island, luckily there were no more then 20 boats parked around the island and everyone stretched comfortable apart. Some people on the island bbqing, some people swimming, some people snorkeling, and the best part is the amazingly cool water. Being in the sun when we stop is a bit hot so we jumped right into the water, it was amazing, the sensation was fantastic. I always jump right in, sinking into the water, enveloped by this cool and shocking feeling, its refreshing. I know I’m out of shape because I can swim for a little while and when I’m out of breath I just float, but it feels good to move.

We saw a few friends there and we were having a blast. The Kuwait Coast Guard passes by every once in a while but they don’t seem to be bothering anyone. I got in a dingy and started the engine after almost pulling my arm trying to start the damn engine, and as soon as I got it start two of us went for a stroll around the parked boats. At full throttle that dingy is slower then a turtle but still a lot of fun, and when we were two heavy guys the diny was taking in some water so we had to be careful. The water was perfect, it was so much fun to get out and a complete change.

I have wanted to get a scale for a long time but all these places I pass by have these cheap scales which are huge and don’t fit easily into the bathroom. Or you have to have it in a spot to stand perfectly to get the right weight, I have seen which is really cool and mechanical in Italy but I haven’t seen in anywhere. Then I saw the Soehnle Niro in The Chedi Muscat, tried it a few times and it was very accurate and clear. It fits perfectly in a corner of my bathroom, there isn’t much space to work with so its really thin fitting perfectly in the corner. It gives a perfect reading of my weight, I check it every morning after I jump out of the shower and keeps me in check, there are days where I’m eating light and days that I mess around. So this is the best scale I have ever used and available through amazon, low profile, and simple to use.

Pros:

• Computer Scale, Very Accurate
• 1.8cm tall
• Relatively Waterproof
• A door can go over it

Link: Amazon
Rating:

It has been a about 10 days at this point and I think that my body has somewhat adjusted to my eating habits. I have cut back significantly with my eating habits but not as strict as before. I have just dropped around 1 kilogram over a week and I’m honestly eating comfortably, still keeping to small quantities but not completely cutting myself. Now at this stage I think I should seriously start working out but that initial step to go to the gym is just so damn hard, I just keep coming up with excuses not to go and then I say its just too late to go. So I have to break this cycle and start moving a little more. My main goal is to able to enjoy some water sports during the summer so I really need to strengthen my biceps and chest to be able to wakeboard at the beginning of the summer.

What I’m Craving:

• Chocolate Fudge Cake
• Coldstone Ice Cream
• Watermelon
• Four Cheese Pizza
• Slider Burgers